The extraction of forest CO₂ storage capacity using high-resolution airborne lidar data

With the increasing concern about global warming, the estimation of the CO₂ sink capacity of the biosphere has become one of the main issues of remote sensing studies. This paper discusses the estimation of CO₂ storage capacity in forests using airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) data. To achieve the correct biomass estimation, a processing chain consisting of the bare earth digital terrain model (DTM) extraction and individual tree crown segmentation has been constructed and applied to the dense airborne lidar data. As a result of the sample processing, the reliable bare earth DTM and tree boundaries were extracted in the study area with an overall accuracy of 71%. The total estimated CO₂ storage capacity in the study area using the extracted tree crown structures is accurate, with only a 7% error level compared to field measurements.